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tENTATIVELY, aN iNTERVIEW

Tentatively a Convenience,

Alan Davies

Why we're reading this: Key US based creative thinker. Essential.
[close] Key US based creative thinker. Essential.

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Apr 16, 2020 Tentatively, Convenience rated it it was amazing

Shelves: biography, in-its-own-category, working-class-intellectuals, absurdism, author-tentatively-a-convenience, literature, philosophy, film, literary-criticism, essays

I GENERALLY DON'T REALLY REVIEW MY OWN BOOKS HERE.

SO, this isn't really a review, it's just the blurb reviews that grace the back cover of the book. I see that Eddie Watkins, another Goodreads writer, has already posted his blurb review + some links on his own. Thanks, Eddie! I'm repeating his review here again anyway, partially for thoroughness & partially because it's so excellent.

"Alan Davies has gone where no one has gone before. No, not on the Enterprise, but into the mind of tENTATIVELY I GENERALLY DON'T REALLY REVIEW MY OWN BOOKS HERE.

SO, this isn't really a review, it's just the blurb reviews that grace the back cover of the book. I see that Eddie Watkins, another Goodreads writer, has already posted his blurb review + some links on his own. Thanks, Eddie! I'm repeating his review here again anyway, partially for thoroughness & partially because it's so excellent.

"Alan Davies has gone where no one has gone before. No, not on the Enterprise, but into the mind of tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE, America's favorite Pataphysician, now fully eschewing art in favor of mad science, reveals to Alan what he really thinks about all those poses of the worlds of art and poetry. "I've long since rejected being an 'artist' b/c it's my opinion that art is an uncreative context & I prefer to be creative." From the censorship of his work to the explosive revelations of his most rational analysis, reading the interview between two of America's most radical artists is a consummation of something incredibly perverse under your Christmas tree." — James Sherry, poet, essayist, publisher of Roof Books

"My job as Sacred Scribe of the Church of the SubGenius has brought me into contact with some DAMNED interesting, and, even better, damned WEIRD indiviudals. Of the many hundreds, perhaps many thousands of weirdos I have known, the man we call Saint tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE stands out as one of the earliest-met and yet, even 35 years later, still among the very most weird and interesting. His startling originality and sheer testicularity would be enough to qualify him as a SubGenius Saint. But on top of that he's a nice fellow. But you know he must be pretty smart, because you can kind of see his brain under his hair." - Rev. Ivan Stang, Sacred Scribe #273, Church of the SubGenius

"Buxom blond bombshell, Miss Belinda Blurb, in the act of blurbing, once famously blurted out, "Yes, this is a 'BLURB'." Those words are as true today as when they were first written by Galett Burgess in 1907. Over thirty years ago, tENTATIVELY a cONVENIENCE, exposed me to the joys of subverting reality, and changed my life in the process. Here in 2013, Mr. cONVENIENCE has done it again with another excellent installment in his inspirational series of must read, self help books. Mr. cONVENIENCE inspires us all with his insightful observations, entertaining anecdotes, and shoddy financial advice. If YOU are going to READ BOOKS this year, THIS could be ONE of those BOOKs." — Vermin Supreme, Presidential Candidate

"As so much of tENT's work aspires to an apotheosis of self-referntiality, wherein the work's workings are explicated as they are embodied in the work itself, the personal interview is in many ways the perfect form for his ideas. As one of tENT's laziest readers I welcome the relatively un-coded directness of this book, and for the opportunity to learn more about his life, from his earliest adventures in reading (which accounts reached in and tickled my little boy brain) to his last mega-word. This book is relatively easy to ingest, but is filled with seeds that swell and germinate inside the receptive head. As with all his work it is rigorously logical yet zany; laced with ideas from the "highest" partials yet rooted and practical; and serious yet funny. These are not contradictions though many might take them as such, and they are not so much strategies to evade intellectual entrapment (however worthy an endeavor) as self-flowering practices of our innate freedom and inherent weirdness. tENT as esoteric everyman! Listen and learn! But open this book at your own risk, as the attentive tENTian reader will begin to die laughing while reading it. I'll laugh through my last breath any day, so long as tENT never finishes pronouncing his last word, laughing as he goes." - Eddie Watkins, poet, GoodReads reviewer ...more

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Apr 19, 2020 Stefan Szczelkun marked it as to-read

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